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Apr 7, 2026 John Anthony Smith, Founder and CSO at Fenix24, is a seasoned cybersecurity leader who helps organizations recover from breaches. He argues more tools haven’t made us safer. Conversation covers why backups and recovery often fail. It highlights alert fatigue and SOC limits. Smith urges shifting investment toward resilience, immutable backups, segmentation, and orchestrated recovery.
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Buying Tools Isn't The Same As Being Secure
- Organizations buy security tools expecting silver-bullet fixes.
- John Anthony Smith says most tools are misconfigured or not implemented with real attacker behavior in mind.
Most Breached Organizations Had No Survivable Backups
- Many breached firms lacked survivable backups when Phoenix 24 assessed them.
- John Anthony Smith cites their data: 84% of organizations they met in breach had no single survivable backup copy.
Outsource Log Review When You Can't Staff A SOC
- Outsource SOC log review and response if you can't staff it properly.
- John Anthony Smith argues in-house SOCs often lack people, process, and policy to handle alert volume and dwell-time windows.